The UCLA Collection of Meteorites is the largest on the West Coast and contains over 2500 samples from about 1500 different meteorites. It is the fifth largest collection of meteorites in the United States and the second largest housed at a university.
Our collection includes the main masses of about 40 meteorites and the type specimens of more than 300 meteorites collected from hot deserts; 60 of these are iron meteorites. Eighty of these meteorite type specimens are from the state of California. These were collected by local citizens during the past few decades, mainly from the playas (dry lakes) scattered around the Mojave Desert.
Some of our meteorites are large and well suited for exhibits (in fact, some of them are exhibited at the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History). However, most of the samples are small and mainly of value for research.
The study of meteorites and the processes that formed them is called cosmochemistry. The cosmochemists at UCLA are among the most productive university res
